DCentric

Good morning, DCentric readers! Here are today’s links:

Berkeley and Oakland Come to the Table Legendary Chef Alice Waters on food as a social justice issue: “I think there’s some extraordinary people within Slow Food who really speak to food justice…Food justice, the right of everyone to eat well, is something just that’s deeply part of Slow Food; it comes from the Italian labor movement.” (Mother Jones)

A station manager’s message for ‘these white people who hate Metro’ A Metro station manager vents via Facebook about “white people”. TBD asks: “Why is race so intrinsically tied to the worker’s assessment of how people see and talk about Metro?…Are these isolated thoughts from a station manager or do they reflect more broadly the sentiments among Metro workers?” (TBD.com)

Columbia Heights Bias Attack: When Cops Look the Other Way “The ease with which the panic of the victims was ignored points to a larger problem with the way the anger of black women can be callously dismissed. It’s an attitude ultimately traceable to the ‘angry black woman’ stereotype: a caricature of black women that portrays black women as irrationally angry and belligerent with little or no provocation.” (The Root)

Walmart’s Offer: 2,000 Trained People (1,200 of Whom May Get Walmart Jobs) “The Community College of the District of Columbia will get $1.7 million to create a “Retail Academy” that will train 1,000 people over three years in basic customer service skills. The Community Foundation of the National Capital Region will get $1.3 million to hand out in competitive grants to local community-based organizations for work readiness training.” (Washington City Paper)
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Good morning, DCentric readers! Fresh from the WAMU digital kitchen, bite-sized news for you:

Mayor’s youth program brings fears of London-like mobs to Chinatown Local teens love spending their Friday nights in Chinatown, so The District is organizing a “youth engagement” program to reach out to them. But, “some business owners fear the event will draw more youths to the area and unleash destructive forces similar to the mobs that have been rioting in London.” (Washington Examiner )

D.C.’s summer jobs program coming in $5 million under budget Speaking of youth, in the past, the local summer jobs program that caters to them has gone over-budget due to mismanagement. This year, 14,126 young people (ages 14-21) worked at 1,100 work sites all over the city– and 52 percent of them were from east of the river. (Washington Times)

Post Office Closing Generates Concerns in Northeast If a post office closes, you may have to venture further out to mail a package– or find a job. “The postal service has long been considered a place for women and people of color to work…The postal workforce, according to its own statistics, is 37 percent female, eight percent Latino and eight percent Asian; Blacks make up about 21 percent of the employees since the 1960s.” (Washingtoninformer.com)

A Modest Proposal, Cont. More from Ta-Nahesi on the “g-word”: “But when we talk about gentrification, understand that we really are talking about the result of actual policies…erected with the explicit intent of making sure that another group of Americans remain a permanent peon class. This is not the lens to view all of black America, but in terms of that portion that really is being priced out, that really can’t experience a functioning neighborhood, this is a start. Gentrification is not magic. It’s what our forefathers intended to happen.” (The Atlantic)

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Good morning, DCentric readers! Woohoo for Wednesday and delicious links:

RACE Card – Michele Norris NPR/All Things Considered host Michele Norris asked people all over the country to send her a postcard bearing a six-word statement on race. Here are a few: “You talk like a white girl”. “Racist Childhood. I didn’t buy it.” ” Start with kids, and MIX well” “LOOKOUT! Hispanics are taking over.” “It will be up to women.” (michele-norris.com)

How America turned poverty into a crime According to Kaaryn Gustafson of the University of Connecticut Law School, applying for assistance feels like being booked by the police: “There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. The ostensible goal is to prevent welfare fraud, but the psychological impact is to turn poverty itself into a kind of crime.” (Salon)

After Years Of Research, Confederate Daughter Arises And she’s not white: “Rice is the second black Real Daughter to be recognized by an organization that was once exclusively for white women. Yet some progressive historians and Civil War buffs frown at her father’s story. They say the very term “black Confederate” supports the notion that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery.” (npr.org)

Hispanic households: Looking at the wealth gap Sir, about that wealth gap– why did Hispanics lose more equity than their black home-owning counterparts? “Over time more and more Hispanics had become economically vulnerable and eminently exploitable, a fact attributable in large part to American immigration policy.” (Economist)

A color-blind Montgomery County is still a myth “(Joey) lives in Four Corners and said he’d support a curfew. He won’t take his family to Silver Spring at night because of ‘thug-looking kids’ hanging out there. ‘And I’m not just talking about black and Latino kids,’ he quickly added. If we don’t see race, is that statement necessary?” (Greater Greater Washington)